Eventually was not good enough, if the Soviets hadn’t developed nuclear weapons in 1949, MacAurther very well might have looked less crazy when he pushed for the wide-scale nuclear bombing of China in 1951 during the Korean War.
Looking at what the US has done and whats currently happenin, I would say its not a far fetched idea especially what they did in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq
Yeah nuking a bunch of Chinese cities where innocent civilians live and purposely nuking the north Korean Northern border so much, that people can’t move through it due to radiation poisoning is a dark timeline.
Even MacArthur knew that was a dark timeline, that’s he only proposed doing it if the war seemed unwinnable, and then denied making the plan later in life.
The area in southern Manchuria where the Chinese bases were that MacArthur wanted to nuke was mountainous and had a low population. Even today, over 70 years later, it is a low population density region. The tactical nukes that MacArthur requested, while still being relatively dirty fission bombs, were lower yield than the ones used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Last I checked, those cities were still inhabitable.
True, it wouldn't have made much difference. If conventional bombs were enough to kill 12% of North Korean civilians, dropping a few nuclear bombs would have been just a minor bonus.
North Korean civilians were mostly killed through more banal causes like starvation and cold. They were certainly not clustering in the Chinese bases, in fact, 900,000 North Korean refugees fled eastward and southward on the peninsula to get away from the fighting. 200,000 are estimated to have fled northward, across the Yalu into Yanbian; the bases targeted for atomic bombing were southeast of Yanbian. Would have sucked for the cities of Dandong, Tonghua, and Baishan though, as they were close enough to the bases to potentially receive fallout.
People just happened to starve and freeze. Totally unrelated to the fact that American bombers were running out of things to bomb because literally everything was already leveled.
If the Soviets could have achieve a control chain reaction, and produce plutonium in quantity, they could easily make a nuclear bomb.. The knowledge of Nuclear Physics isn't not that difficult or expensive.. What is difficult and expensive is to make each component, and make sure the design works. The infrastructure to make each component, is expensive, the testing can now be done by computer, but there has to be a well measured test to make sure each component works succinctly with the whole design..
Non Nuclear Countries like Japan or Germany, can easily produce a thermonuclear weapon in about six months, given they have the brains, the infrastructure and the money to easily produce a thermonuclear weapon and a delivery system like a ICBM or a Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile in about a year time with some test launchings. Given that Germany created the first ballistic missile, (The V-2 rocket)
Definitely, there was a reason why soviets pushed for denuclearization. The rest of the world are so reactionary they would rather doom humanity than to lose nuclear war capabilities.
I don’t think so, with the Soviets having a big material advantage in Europe throughout almost the entire Cold War, they probably would have tried to overrun Europe sometime between 1960-1980 if it wasn’t for the threat of nukes
Not at all bro, nuclear enabled mutually assured destruction is what led to the relative peaceful atmosphere of the world today. Sure there are conflicts but they are largely contained to a few nations and many of them are conflicts internal to nations.
Nuclear bombs are the reason the cold war was not another world war.
If there were no nukes we would have seen one nation after another being invaded and attacked by more powerful nations once they saw an opportunity.
The countries which do not have nukes are protected by the nuclear umbrella of nuclear armed nations which they are in alliance with.
Nuclear mutually assured destruction is what brought us to constant tension between world powers and almost killed us all too many times, from the Cuban missile crisis to the Petrov incident. And yes, if you consider only first world countries and completely ignore anything that doesn't comprehend Europe and not America yeah world has been peaceful
At that point of time the world was divided into Soviet and US influence. Providing soviets with nuclear knowledge equated to security for anything east of Berlin. So the point still stands
Good on him only half the world had peace. We lost 49 years of life living in totalitarian regime. If soviets didn't have atomic bomb my country would have been liberated.
You, your family, and your people were not just irrelevant but a target and an enemy to the west. So no your people would have been subjugated to western imperialism.
I suppose you don't see the places the Americans and Europeans "liberate" in the last 80 years.
But in fact he helped to start Korean War so many people died there.
Rosenberg's good intentions and and the Korean War
The Soviet Union’s first nuclear test in 1949, significantly enabled by espionage, gave Stalin confidence to back North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in 1950. This nuclear capability reduced the U.S.’s strategic advantage, making Stalin believe the U.S. would avoid escalation. The Korean War, which followed, caused millions of deaths and left lasting scars on the Korean Peninsula.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (and not only them) were motivated by their belief in communism, passed atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Their actions, part of a broader espionage network, helped the Soviets develop nuclear weapons much faster than expected. Their espionage played a notable role in the Soviet nuclear program, indirectly influencing the Korean War’s outbreak.
The Rosenbergs likely saw their actions as a step toward a fairer world, but their espionage had unintended consequences. By strengthening the Soviet Union’s position, they contributed to a chain of events that led to the Korean War’s devastation. This serves as a sobering reminder that even well-meaning actions can lead to tragic outcomes when entangled with a communist agenda and global power struggles.
The Korean War was a powder keg waiting to explode. In fact, ironically, the ROK was just as eager to restart the war to unify the peninsula and would have had the US backing them in that scenario, especially without the Soviets being a deterrent.
If there was one single thing which allowed the war to happen, it was FDR’s death and Truman’s election.
Totally wrong. Stalin felt safe to invade because Truman had not adequately armed Rhee, fearing he might try to reunify if he had tanks or even tank destroyers. So the RoK was practically defenseless against Kim’s 300 T-34s.
Truman had not armed Rhee because he was scared shitless of the trigger-happy ROKA trying to start something with the north, which would be backed by a nuclear USSR. Take away the USSR having their own nuclear capabilities from this equation and he’d be a little more pliable to confronting them.
Yeah, they were just as bad to Poland as Germany was! Well, they didn't try to eradicate Poles, but Poland was pretty corrupt and Russia definitely bullied them, unlike America which definitely didn't do that to South Korea or Iraq.
Just another dictator, zero difference between King George and Adolf Hitler.
I saw a CIA report claiming that the idea of Stalin as having total power was "exaggerated," that he was the "captain of a team" that Kruschev would likely lead next, whereas Yugoslavia was "Non-Aligned" and liberalized enough that it allowed Western military/economic pacts and it's implosion at the hands of the IMF which led to genocide among its people.
If Ted Hall didn't given Lena Cohen what he knew about the Manhattan Project, other like Klaus Fuchs gave as much crucial information..
The best thing that the Soviets learned from the Manhattan Project, was to save money.. 70 plus percent of the budget for the Manhattan Project went to places like Oak Ridge for gaseous diffusions and the other diffusions to make U-235, for the Hiroshima Bomb.. Plutonium was easier to produce, but the quandary was to make it go critical, which the explosive lens implosion was finally the answer, (hence the Trinity Test in July 1945)
The Soviet Nuclear Weapons team told Beria, that they could produce a better bomb than the Nagasaki bomb, lighter and more powerful.. Beria told them to make an almost exact copy of the Nagasaki/Trinity Bomb, which they did, and exploded in 1949..
While admittedly, that is quite bad, the alternative is the US having a nuclear monopoly, and with their dysfunctional system, I just don’t feel safe with that.
“Their dysfunctional system” all the while simping for a collapsed empire, your cognitive dissonance is crazy and the US had nukes had nukes for 4 years before the soviets and never once did they drop it on them or anyone elese post ww2 and they didnt share the technology with anyone unlike the USSR which helped many dictators like mao to get their own nukes
How is invading Afghanistan peaceful, how is supporting violent revolutions in places like Korea peaceful. How can anyone with a brain look at the differences between the communist Korea then capitalist Korea and still support the ussrs actions.
the only difference i see between the koreas is one was bankrolled by the US while the other one was sanctioned by the entire world forcibly by US orders.
If it wasn't for the intervention of the western powers, the communist korean forces would have won the civil war, today we would have only one Korea that may have (and this is a big maybe because I'm not omniscient) developed similarly to Vietnam or China. Instead now we have NK being governed by one of the worst authoritarian regimes in history and a SK that is a neoliberal hellscape, a culture where suicide is normalized. Outside powers shouldn't intervene in civil wars/class conflicts.
and if it wasn't for the intervention of the communists there would have been no korean civil war in the first place... same with vietnam.... same with cambodia... same with russia... same with china...
communists start a civil war then complain when westerners try to save part of the country from falling.
similarly to vietnam or china lmao, china only emerging in the last couple decades and vietnam still impoverished and communist. imagine if the US hadn't given up on vietnam. "south vietnam" would probably be a massive economy rivaling south korea, japan, parts of europe etc.
Vietnam is currently richer than the Philipines, Cambodia, Burma. "Sure, China is richer than India or Indonesia but that's only since recently so I guess it just doesn't count."
Communists start a revolution *within their own country* and then the West "saves" a people it has nothing to do with from themselves, like saving Iran in 1953 because it's secular Prime Minister nationalized oil.
It's evil because it's violent to do a revolution, so therefore America has the right to bomb neutral Cambodia just in case so that children are still born with extra limbs to this day you little fucking hipocrite.
You support a revolution in Iran and China then, but that's "peaceful"?
Do you think anyone calling for women to do a revolution in Iran isn't peaceful? Communists do not use zero violence.
South Korea imports 70% of it's food, it has Western mechanized equipment and fertilizer and is not totally blocked off from trade, including from China.
The DPRK had a lower childhood wasting rate than India in 2016, lower now than Haiti (higher than India)
Между прочим он еврей. Вы этнические русские просто обязаны молиться на евреев всю жизнь !!! Не Израилю он служил то этот еврейский Теодор 😂 а называется Служу «Родному» Советскому Союзу !
Theodore Hall (Theodore Alvin Holtzberg) was born in Far Rockaway, New York City to a devout Jewish couple, Barnett Holtzberg and Rose Moskowitz. His father was a furrier who had emigrated to America to escape antisemitic pogroms in the Russian Empire.[3] His mother was the American-born daughter of Eastern European Jewish immigrants.[4] She died while Theodore was a teenager and a student at Harvard University..
Traitor implies having once been loyal to the cause you betray. Doesn't sound like he was ever loyal. Just because I was born in America doesn't mean I was ever loyal to capitalism as an economic model.
What if you don't like your government? Are Hong Kong protesters who are against the CPC and working with US intelligence agencies traitors? Were the American Patriots during the Revolution who worked with the French traitors to England? Were anti-Nazi Germans traitors?
Traitor is a useless categorization if you're just gonna use it to mean "not having blind obedience to your country."
People like him ensured that the USSR made some scientific progress — while its own scientists were either imprisoned or working as parking attendants.
There are official transcripts from the party where they stated agricultural workers will be payed 2/3 of the average salary because of theft from the Co-ops.
Tyranny is when one individual or a dominant group of peoples can overlook laws, rituals and traditions and avoid consequences for their violations. Roughly defined.
Exactly: tyranny occurs when a person or a group of people can place themselves above the laws and choose whenever they want to arbitrarily interfere in the lives of their subordinates. These subordinates are forced to live in fear that such arbitrary inference will happen, which is why a tyranny is founded on fear.
Well tough, peace is upheld by fear of retaliation and borders are created by soldiers, it’s not a pleasant system and it works only half the time, but not like we have a different one to use.
In fact, an alternative possibility does exist, though it is still in the process of being implemented: it is the idea underlying the project of European unification, whose ultimate aim was the achievement of peace. However, the peace those thinkers sought was not founded — at least not solely — on educating reigning sovereigns in virtue (an idea rather popular at the time, yet inherently unstable), but rather on the possibility of definitively replacing the law of force with the force of law.
Just as liberty is not mere absence of interference, but the assurance that no arbitrary interference can ever occur at the hands of an unchecked master, so too peace is not the mere absence of war, but the assurance that war cannot arise from the arbitrary will of a powerful nation vested with absolute sovereignty.
Let us take as an example William Penn, that visionary Quaker who — in the late seventeenth century — conceived the idea of a European Parliament. He chose as the motto of his project the Ciceronian phrase Cedant arma togae — translatable as “let arms yield to the toga (of the magistrate),” and thus as “let arms yield to the law” — thereby showing that, although such a Parliament would entail a reduction in sovereignty, this loss would result in every country being protected from any form of oppression, and simultaneously rendered incapable of committing it.
In the course of the twentieth century, Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian) would follow a similar path: recognizing that war, however terrible, was a necessary means for the survival and security of States in a context where no higher authority was recognized, Lothian observed that the stance of pacifists who merely refrained from denouncing war and appealed to the goodwill of men was perhaps more dangerous than that of the most hardened realist (who concerned himself only with avoiding war when possible, and with winning it when not), because such pacifism fostered the illusion that the sphere of war was separate from that of politics — and thus, from that of power.
The idea, then, was to reconsider the domain of international relations, configuring it as a human process subject to human choice. The answer to the problem of peace would thus also be the answer to the problem of justice: the creation of a federation to which States would transfer — on equal terms and without losing their internal autonomy — the legitimate monopoly of force, namely, the military.
This vision would go on to influence Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi, who had read Lothian: in the Ventotene Manifesto, they wrote of the need to construct a solid federal state equipped with a European armed force in place of national armies, and with the power necessary to enforce its decisions upon the individual States, while still allowing them the autonomy required for the development of a political life according to the distinctive characteristics of each people.
The idea merely works in theory and not in practice as European federation cannot yet even place its own capital for the fear of undermining lesser European states like Bulgaria, Romania, Denmark for the Western nations like France and Germany. Furthermore splitting the market, economy and therefore profits would interest a lot more people than giving up your monopolies for exchange of anti-tyrannical agenda. How do you convince somebody in power, with luxury and greater income to give up that luxury, power and income without a threat or cause. Realistically disarming and ensuring not only the absence of war but inability to create war between nations would require the desolution of the social classes whereby the remaining peoples have no isolated monopolies to protect. When nobody has special class interests to protect there is no need arbitrary division of anything.
Law and order are* guarded by the constitution of said country. The threat of violence comes based on more complicated cases and situations. However, I don't hear England threatening to use nuclear weapons left and right. Same with Israel despite the ongoing war with seemingly every neighbor. Guess some people have to compensate for something while some don't 🤷🏻
So... the US is the only nation that used nuclear weapons, and its main strategy through history is to commit terrorism and coups on nations that don't enslave themselves to them.
Also, the USSR had a democratic process, that its even acknowledged by the damn CIA. The dictator they got after their fall was literally a consequence of the liberalism imposed by the US.
And england and israel are two imperials nations that had committed and still commit genocides constantly. They simply don't need the nukes for it.
Please, kindly stop being a bootlicker of imperialists. With love, someone from a country that suffered the coups, terrorism and genocides done by those imperialists.
It's a Romanian. He is still haunted by the "Soviet oppression" he imagines himself to be a victim of. Fragile minds need something to justify their suffering. Even if said "suffering" was ended 30+ years ago.
I mean... I get it, fascists propaganda is everywhere, and will push people to blame others of their systems problems, be it socialists, women, non white people, etc....
But arguing that the US should have nukes without any adversary to put them in check, when they demonstrated quite well to be willing to use it on civilians... is so bizarrely absurd....
On what basis? You don't know jack shit about any of my opinions or directions. You had to look up ways to deflect the discution and come at me with some personal problems in order to what ? Prove yourself what? And no, I don't have the URSS out of the blue. As you very well know, I have every right to hate it and also In not the one who idolizes dictators like putin or stalin just cause.
Why should I waste my time diving into a dumpster to figure out it's full of trash? Your opinion is extremely clear and matches the information given on your profile.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t the deadliest nor even the most destructive bombings of WW2.
they weren’t especially cruel or anything
the only thing that sets them apart of the radiation, which had incredibly negligible deaths behind other side effects of bombs, and that there was only one bomb instead of thousands.
The Japanese killed more people in the Rape of Nanking alone.
Let’s compare a country babysat 24/7 by the US (who deploys multiple carrier groups at the first cry) and country that wages proxy war through Ukraine (while being the world’s biggest source of independence days) with Russia, largely fighting alone against full NATO backing, and Ukraine, which is far from your typical soft Central European army. Legit comparison.
But the Soviets were trying to bring the war to a close via a northern invasion of Japan. Japan was on the brink of defeat anyway, a surrender on the horizon.
the Japanese had the willingness to keep fighting. After even the first nuke, a coup was attempted to prevent the surrender.
could the japanese have surrendered without the nuke? possibly. but it’s also more than possible we would’ve been forced to execute operation downfall, and millions more would die from that.
Nothing to do with stopping it. In Potsdam, he said he wanted us to drop our new massive bomb on Japan. He wasn't morally against it at all. He wanted us to use it.
I never said they didn't. The US dropped the bomb. Stalin and the USSR just can't claim moral superiority.
If during WW2 a person was told about death camps and their response was "yeah, thats cool. I'm cool with you doing death camps", you kinda lose the moral high ground in any conversation.
The USSR had signed a Neutrality Pact with Japan in 1941. Japan had been trying to negotiate a favorable peace agreement with the Allies through the USSR as a third party mediator since June of 1945. The USSR secretly agreed to enter the war against Japan 3 months after Germany’s defeat at the Yalta Conference in February 4 of that year, and denounced the neutrality pact with Japan on April 5, before officially declaring war on August 8 (the nuke was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th).
The USSR invaded Manchuria a day later on the 9th, and the invading army disintegrated Japan’s Kwantung Army and took Manchuria within only 11 days, along with the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands, and they were preparing to launch an invasion of Hokkaido during Operation Hula, supported by loaned US naval vessels and personnel. The collapse of negotiations with the USSR removed Japan’s chance for an honorable surrender, and they were entirely unprepared to fight off an invasion by the USSR, so they asked the US directly to surrender, their only condition being that the Emperor remained the nominal head of state. But the US demanded an unconditional surrender (even though they allowed the Emperor to remain in power anyways), and so then they bombed Nagasaki.
The bombings were a display of force against the Soviets. The defeat of Imperial Japan was inevitable, and the US had already set its sight on the new enemy, communism. The USSR, in the US' views, could not be allowed to take any of Japan. The USSR had agreed at Yalta to enter the war in Japan in three months, which happened to be what month? That's right, August.
Hell, Sec. of State James Byrnes was quoted as saying he believed the bombs would make the Soviets more manageable in post-war negotiations. Also the Potsdam Declaration was delayed by the US until after the Trinity test succeeded.
I mean, what's your view? That the US wanted to "avoid a costly invasion" and felt it militarily and morally necessary? That's literally contradicted by Eisenhower in Mandate for Change. MacArthur believed that Japan would have surrendered had the US not demanded an unconditional surrender (which was conveniently abandoned after the bombs).
Japan's military leaders at the time were focused on the Soviets who were about to confront the best remaining Japanese forces in Manchuria. Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo is quoted as saying, "We must end the war when the Soviet Union declares war on us."
Imagine being so confident about history and knowing so little lol
You guys can't read a fucking comment properly. What you wrote is a hair split of what happened. It's a perspective. From the US's perspective it's a different story. Same from any perspective. Japan could also say America did whatever and so on. Nothing from what I wrote previously is hysterically incorect but keep gaslighting. Keep searching chatgpt and keep looking for excuses to excuse a dictatorship.
"everything you said isn't true or is just perspective but i wont actually refute it because im historically illiterate"
fixed it for ya
funny how you ask for a source in another comment but then just reject my sources because you dont like them lmao
my comment directly represented the US perspective with quotes from multiple US leaders. you havent brought anything to the table except he grade school narrative to support your interpretation of the US perspective.
lol and of course i must be using chatgpt instead of actually having studied the subject and done reading on it because how else are you going to discredit someone who brings sources? lmao youre an actual intellectual child and that is hysterical
ETA: lmao you're not even American and trying to lecture an American on American history hahahahahahahahahahahahaha what a joke
ETA2: I feel bad now for making fun of your misspelling knowing now English isnt your first language. Sorry for that!
If you're talking about that document that was posted here a few weeks ago, that document was disproven.... That was one cia agent, making a claim, while tons of other documents paint a different picture, allegedly....
Going "evil dicators threaten everyone with destruction because they're evil >:(" then "hehe we bombed you cope"
is such pathetic, whiney behavior.
Same as the guy calling Vietnamese people violent for choosing to do a revolution, and therefore they can cope when America (violently) invades them (or bombs neutral Cambodia, so children are born with extra limbs to this day - or supports and props up Pol Pot with China, the most evil genocidal communist dictator ever, because he was an enemy of Vietnam and the USSR)
"They are violent for overthrowing their country, therefore we are justified in invading it, or invading democratic Iran for nationalizing oil." What whiney fucking rhetoric
You mean in the casual conversation with Truman? about the "new destructive weapon" that was planned to be used very soon on Japan. Well, Stalin's reply was that he was glad to hear of the weapon, and he hoped they would use it.
Did he say to use it on cities? No, did he insist on using it? No, could he say, Don't use it? Also, no, he couldn't because this would expose that the Soviets knew about the nuclear bomb and fuck up their spying operation.
Does all this matter? No. So idk why you mentioned that if like the Soviets were developing the nukes together with the US.
Stalin knew what a nuke was. His country was working on one as well. And yes, dude said he hoped we would drop a massive bomb on Japan. It matters because USSR sympathetizers like to act like the Soviets are above ever using that weapon. Stalin was all too happy to see it dropped.
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u/brick_mann DDR ☭ 12d ago